


There You Are

by deadeyedwritergirl



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, M/M, OT4, Solo Artist Zayn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-03
Updated: 2019-03-03
Packaged: 2019-11-08 17:22:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17985446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadeyedwritergirl/pseuds/deadeyedwritergirl
Summary: The one where Liam is broken-hearted but hopeful, Zayn thought he was doing what was best for Liam and Nourry feel betrayed.





	There You Are

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to write something based on 'There You Are' since that masterpiece was released.
> 
> I think this ended up being more a literal depiction of the song. But I hope you like it, nonetheless.
> 
> The usual disclaimers apply: this is a pure work of fiction. None of what is written is based on facts, it is all from my imagination. I do not know or own One Direction.

_“Uhm…uh, Li? It’s uh…well I guess you know it’s me. I just…I don’t know why I called. I’m sorry.”_

The phone clicked. And that was the end of the voicemail.

Liam pulled the phone from his ear and stared at it, as if he were willing Zayn to call again.

He was out on the terrace, having a smoke and checking his messages when he’d come across Zayn’s. It had come in hours earlier.

He’d missed it the first time around because they’d been cooped up in the studio all day, working on a new One Direction album. It had been just like old times when they’d started writing for the band but he was a bit distracted by something else in his life to fully enjoy being back with his boys again.

He’d stared at the phone for almost two minutes and when it didn’t magically ring again, he pulled up the familiar number and pressed ‘call’.

The phone rang and rang without answer and Liam started to worry.

Zayn had sounded drunk in the voicemail. He rarely got drunk, tipsy or buzzed – yes, but never drunk.

He needed to go check up on him, make sure he’s okay.

After a last attempt of getting him on the phone, he gave up and went back into the studio to tell the guys he had to go.

Inside the studio, Niall was lounging on the big leather couch that sat against the wall opposite to the door. He had his guitar on his lap, strumming away on an idea he had for a melody. Harry was next to him humming along and tapping his foot, occasionally singing a lyric idea. And Louis was at the mixing board, a legal pad in front of him, writing down ideas too.

They all looked up at him when he pushed through the door, a little more forcefully than he’d intended. He didn’t know why but he was suddenly anxious and itching to get out of there and find Zayn.

“Hey, lads! Hate to do this to you but I have to go. Can we pick this up tomorrow?”

Niall stopped strumming and considered him carefully, while Harry asked, “Everything all right?” his lazy drawl laced in concern.

“Oh, uh…yeah, I just need to uh…” he fumbled for an excuse but came up short. He couldn’t tell them the real reason he needed to go. Not with the way things were between Zayn and the other three lads.

Louis, who had been silently watching him from the mixing board, went back to his writing, decidedly unbothered all of a sudden.

“What’s he done now?” he asked sarcastically.

Liam didn't have to ask who, and pretending he didn't know would only prolong the awkward conversation.

“Nothing. I just need to check on him, make sure he’s all right. S’all.”

Liam’s tone was defensive, he hated that he always felt like he had to defend Zayn against the other guys, he especially hated that he felt he had to defend how he felt about him too.

“So this is about Zayn, then?” Niall asked, his previous expression of concern fading into a look of pity Liam guiltily turned away from.

“Li…” was all Harry said but Liam understood the rest that went unsaid anyway. They’d been said before and beared no repeating.

“So what? You’re gonna just swoop in and save him, Batman? Play superhero?” Louis asked, looking back up at Liam, his disapproval clear and unwavering.

Liam chose not to engage. He was already hyper-emotional and he didn’t want to say things he’d regret later. So instead of letting the irritation with his best friend get the better of him, he collected his jacket that hung on the back of the chair beside Louis, checked his pockets for his keys and wallet and turned to head back for the door.

“Yeah, sure go ahead and run to the twat,” Louis mumbled as Liam started to walk out.  
And that was it. All of the calm Liam had tried so hard to keep left the room. The blood was rushing to his ears as he turned around, fists clenched at the ready.

“What did you say?” he asked Louis, who stood up from his seat and faced Liam head on, never one to back down from a confrontation.

“Lou, don’t,” Harry warned, while Niall quietly moved to put his guitar down, ready to jump up if the need arose.

“I said,” Louis continued unfazed by the anger twisting on Liam’s face, “your boy is a _twat_!”  
And that was it. All the restraint he’d had up until that point evaporated and before Liam knew it he was crossing the room and shoving Louis back into the mixing board.

“You better watch it, mate. That’s my husband you’re mouthing off about,” he said pointing a warning finger in his face.

“ _EX_ -husband,” Louis corrected, “he dumped you, remember? Or did you forget?”

  
The words roiled Liam’s stomach like bad sushi. It was already a couple of months into their separation, but it was too soon to accept that he might have lost him. To what? Liam had no idea, Zayn's decision to leave him had been as sudden as it was heartbreaking to Liam.

“I haven’t signed anything yet. I’ll still smash your face in if you don’t shut the fuck up about my _husband_!” his voice was low and dangerous as he got up in Louis’ face.

“Oookay! That’s enough! Both of you,” Harry said coming between them. He gave his own husband a warning look, which Louis met with stubborn defiance.

Niall came up behind Liam, pushing him towards the door. Liam jerked from his grip, still vibrating with anger.

“You’re just going to let him say that shit about Zayn?” his voice thick with disappointment as he looked from Niall to Harry.

Neither one of them said a word and Louis looked unrepentant.

“Some fucking friends you lot are!”

He stormed out of the studio and towards the lobby, still seething.

The past couple of months had been the worst time of his life since Zayn had left the band back in 2015. It had been two months of trying to put on a public façade like everything was fine and dandy in promo interviews, while privately his life was falling apart. And one of the most painful parts was that he felt like he was going through it alone.

When he’d told the other guys about his and Zayn’s separation at first, he hadn’t expected to be pitied but he’d hoped for some sympathy, maybe a little understanding. But all he’d gotten was a few pats on the shoulder. Every time he’d tried to talk about how he felt or Zayn after that, they’d all just shut down. Niall would bristle uncomfortably until he found an excuse to leave the room; Harry would sit pensively, not uttering a sound; and Louis, never one to bite his tongue, would parry all of Liam's feelings with a snarky comment before moving the topic away from it.

For the most part, Liam tried to understand them and tried to accommodate their anger. He knew that their relationship with his husband was strained, but he would have never thought that a simple change in band logistics would suddenly wipe away the amount of history they shared.

But they'd all seemed to have forgotten.

But Liam couldn't just switch it off. He was never going to just stop loving Zayn because he’d needed to get out of a situation that wasn’t making him happy anymore.

So he'd stayed with the love of his life, fought for their relationship even through the distance he could feel it build between himself and his friends.

He was almost at the door, the reception area was empty, owing to the time of night it was, when Harry called after him.

“Li, wait!” Liam stopped, his hand already on the door and turned around.

“Look, he didn’t mean any of that, all right? It’s just…”

“We don’t want to see you get hurt,” Niall finished for Harry as he came up behind him.  
“because he’s going to change his mind and leave you again, just like he left us, and just like he left you two months ago.”

He looked from Niall to Harry, and for the first time in years he read something other than resentment from them at the mention of Zayn.

Liam shook his head slightly, finally understanding the years of cold shoulders and veiled jabs at Zayn from the three of them.

They felt jilted.

After everything they’d been through together, after all the love Zayn had poured into each of them and their friendship, they didn’t understand that Zayn leaving had had nothing to do with them. Nothing to do with their bond and everything to do with his own battles. They’d somehow completely missed the signs of Zayn’s struggle.

He found that he couldn't really blame them for that. Not when he'd missed the beginning of it himself. He'd been blissfully unaware, until he wasn't. And then he’d felt like he'd beared witness to every crushing moment of it.

Liam had started noticing the constant sleeping. In between shows while the other boys were shooting the shit, Zayn would be locked up in their hotel room curtains drawn, just sleeping. Some days Liam would try to coax him out of bed but he’d just lie there, like he was too drained to even speak.

Then he’d stopped eating. Liam hadn’t noticed that at first because with their busy schedule they often ended up eating at different times so he never suspected anything when Zayn begged off of meals, claiming he’d already eaten.

But he didn’t _really_ start notice what was happening until his husband had begun fading. He was even quieter than usual in interviews and at shows, and had lost too much weight for it to be healthy, before Liam had realised that something was terribly amiss.

And then when he'd finally woken up to Zayn's battle, it was fight to try and help him. Liam had felt so powerless as he’d watch Zayn gather every ounce of strength he had to go out every night and put on a show for the thousands of fans that screamed their adoration and adulation at them, and then watch it all fall off of him afterwards, leaving him almost limp.

He'd tried to convince him to get help and eventually he'd agreed. But the improvement hadn't come until after he'd come to terms with what he needed to do.

After leaving there had been a dip in which Liam had been sure Zayn would never come back from. But as he'd started to write again (mostly songs and poems), he'd started coming back to himself. He became the boy Liam had fallen in love with but had missed in recent years.

Seeing what that freedom did for him, made it easier for Liam to accept the loss of a bandmate because his husband's happiness was all he wanted.

But the other lads didn't seem to know all of that.

He was realising now that they had missed all of that and that’s why they never understood why he left. They saw it as a slight against them and their friendship.

He shook his head at his friends’ words. They didn’t understand. They’d been friends for years and they didn’t understand that of everything they had all been through, Zayn had been the one constant in Liam's life. His love had been the one unchanging thing through his own struggles with drink and his weight.

That’s what bonded them from the start, the unconditional acceptance, and eventually love, they had for each other. Even through Zayn leaving the band and the strain that had put on their relationship, neither one of them had ever given up.

Not until two months ago, when seemingly out of nowhere Zayn had told Liam they needed to separate. Blind-sided as he’d been by it, he’d been giving Zayn his space but by no means had he given up on them.

“You’re wrong about him, you know,” he said in sigh. “Zayn didn’t leave _us_. He left the _band_. I guess you lot just never figured out the difference.”

He pulled the door open. Too tired to argue anymore about it.

As the door shut behind him, he heard Louis’ voice say, “Let him go, Haz.” His tone soft and resigned.

  
…

 

When he walked into the apartment, it was dark. The only light came from the kitchen.  
“Z?” he called as he dropped his keys onto the coffee table in the living room area.

He walked toward the open-plan kitchen, intending to get some water on his way upstairs to find Zayn but he halted when he saw the stream of brown liquid coming from just behind the island. As he walked closer, Zayn, lying limp on the floor next to the fallen over bottle, came into view.

His heart stopped and started again, racing. He rushed to his husband’s side and shook him, while calling his name over and over, praying that he was all right.

"Zayn? Love please, wake up!" he pleaded, close to tears.

“Shhh, Li. Not so loud, yeah?” Zayn groused as his eyes fluttered open.

He wasn’t dead. He’d just passed out on the floor.

Liam didn’t know whether he wanted to shake him for giving him such a scare or if he wanted to kiss him, relieved that he was alive and apparently, well.

He pulled back and sat back against the refrigerator, letting out a humourless chuckle.

“Bastard,” he said to himself still shaking his head as Zayn slowly pulled himself up into sitting position, leaning back against the island, opposite Liam.

“There you are,” he said quietly, as his face seemed to light up when his eyes met Liam’s. He said it like he'd follow it up with an 'I've been waiting for you to notice me' like he'd done when they'd first got together. Liam hadn't understood the words until Zayn had explained that he'd been in love with him longer than Liam would have suspected.  
Liam couldn’t help the fondness that crept up on him as he remembered the day. The memory had him smiling at this stupid boy in front of him, the love of his life, who had almost killed him with worry.

“Here I am!” he said with an exasperated smile. "I see you, Zayn..."

' _There you are_ ' and ' _here I am_ ' had become their own little way of reminding one other of their love for each other over the years. But more than that he wanted to say that he could tell Zayn was going through something and that he wanted to be there for him, if only he'd let him. But the words faded, caught in the uncertainty that hung around their relationship lately.

It was quiet between them for beat, before Liam spoke up again.

“You scared me, you know,” he admitted.

“Sorry, babe. I’m all right yeah? Just fell asleep for a bit, is all,” Zayn reassured him.

Liam nodded slightly.

A long silence passed between them, until Liam spoke up again.

“Zayn?”

Zayn looked up at Liam then, the dopey, drunken smile long forgotten.

“Are you all right, though?” he asked, indicating the empty bottle of liquor whose contents were spilled on the floor not too far from them.

Zayn’s eyes tiredly followed Liam’s gaze to the bottle.

He gave a short, humourless chuckle, shaking his head.

“I’ve got myself in a mess, Li,” he admitted.  
Liam waited quietly for him to continue.

“Happens a lot when you’re not here to keep me from reacting without thinking.”

He realised they weren’t talking about the alcohol anymore. Zayn had switched the script on him.

He did that a lot, switching from one subject to another because he found metaphors in everything. Most people couldn’t keep up, but Liam always right there with him, wherever his thoughts took him. That’s why they’d lasted as long as they did despite all they had been through, before Zayn had left the band and before their relationship had become strained and distant.

They’d been built on a mutual understanding, Liam always patient with Zayn and coaxing his thoughts and feelings out of him and Zayn always attentive and loving enough to make an invisible boy feel seen. Their bond ran deep and that’s how he instinctively knew what they were now talking about.

“Happens when I’m there too,” he replied.

The statement was more a guilty admission than an accusation.

Zayn's solo career had been relatively successful, with no thanks to his team. So they butted heads a lot, often ending with Zayn in some sort of trouble with them or the press.

This time he assumed Zayn was talking about the tweet he’d sent out, calling out his management for delaying the release of his album. That kind of insubordination always came with some sort of punishment that would humiliate Zayn in some way or the other.

Liam felt partially responsible because he had not been there to talk him out of pressing 'post' on that tweet. It became one of the many things Liam was regretting in the moment.

They’d _both_ made so many mistakes over the last four years, trying to navigate their relationship in the same way as before even though everything else around them had changed.  
It got even harder to keep it together when each was trying to get their solo career off the ground and they went from spending all of their time together to spending weeks apart at a time. And of course the tensions between Zayn and their friends had taken a toll too.

“Yeah,” Zayn nodded slowly, still coming down from his inebriated haze. “But you never run, Leeyum. Even when I push you away.”

The words were whispered in awe, like Zayn didn’t believe he deserved that kind of loyalty.  
Liam though, wasn’t sure if what Zayn had said was proof of his unrelenting love or just plain stupidity on his part. All he knew was that he’d always be there if Zayn needed him.

“You always come through for me, not like...everyone else ran but you stayed.”

Liam knew who everyone else was but made no attempt to defend them because he felt a bit abandoned by them too, following the events earlier that night.

“You forgave me, Liam, even though they never did. You always forgive me,” Zayn continued quietly, not looking at Liam, but at his hands on his lap like a lost little boy.

Liam just sat silently, listening to the tipsy ramblings of his husband.

“I need you, Li,” he looked directly at Liam when he spoke the words this time.  
“I just didn’t want you to have to choose between the lads and me.”

And in his second epiphany of the night, Liam understood for the first time in their two month separation, what had happened.

“Zayn, I made that choice a while ago,” he said, holding up his left hand to show a plain, platinum band haloing the number ‘4’ tattooed on his ring finger.

“4 years ago I chose you in front of our families and friends. I still choose you now. That will never change.”

Zayn wiped at the tears threatening to fall with the sleeves of his sweater.

“I’m sorry I put us through all of this.” His voice was thick with emotion.

“You’re forgiven babe, I was just waiting for you to realise that I’m not leaving.”

  
It was really remarkable how Liam had kept it together that long throughout that conversation because his heart had broken and pieced itself together so many times since he’d entered the flat that he felt like he might cry too.

As they’d talked, there on the kitchen floor, Liam had managed to sound so sure that he knew they’d fix it but really, he’d been an emotional wreck over the weeks of their separation.

As the weeks had turned into a month and then into two, and nothing had seemed to fix, Liam had begun to think his marriage was over and the thought had been unbearable to him.

But he hadn’t wanted to push Zayn, in case he really had fallen out of love with Liam. He wanted Zayn to be the one to choose to come back, just as he’d been the one to choose to separate in the first place.

“I’m not leaving either. Never wanted to. I just wanted you to be happy. The situation with the lads...I know you’re in the middle and it’s hard. I thought I could make it easier on you.”

“I am happy, when I’m right here with you, you doughnut!” the words were lighter than anything that had been exchanged between them that night, but he meant every word still.

“They’re three of my best mates, but you’re my life Zayn. Nothing makes me happier than you do. Nothing.”

“I’m sorry, Jaan,”

“Just like, talk to me next time, okay? Because this...it broke my heart Z,” everything he’d been holding back in he last 8 weeks burned the back of his eyes as the tears he’d tried so hard to hold back, escaped.

Zayn crawled the distance to Liam, straddling him, then pulled him into a tight hug.

Liam practically collapsed into those familiar arms that had always felt more like home than anywhere else.

He wasn’t sure how long they had been there, on that kitchen floor, just holding onto each other, when he reluctantly broke the moment.

“We should probably get you some water and get you to bed,” he told his husband, who groaned in disapproval as Liam shifted him off his lap so he could get up.

He reached into the fridge for a bottle of water. His phone began to vibrate in his pocket.

He passed the water to Zayn who had managed to stumble up to his feet, before pulling the device out to check who was calling.

The screen flashed with Louis’ name and Liam pressed the ignore button.

Zayn must have noticed because he asked,  
“everything all right?”

“Yeah, we’ll talk about it in the morning.”

He was just moving to put his phone back in his pocket when a text flashed on his screen.

 _ **Tommo 01:38** _  
_You were right, Payno. Can we talk?_

Liam read the text and then replaced the phone in his pocket. He had no doubt that he’d fix things with the boys. For better or for worse they were his best friends and of course they would fix things between all of them.

But not right at that moment.

All he needed that night was to hold and be held by his husband. They could figure the rest out in the morning.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading until the end.
> 
> Please leave comments and kudos AND share with others.
> 
> You can find me over on tumblr too @ deadeyedwritergirl.tumblr.com
> 
> ❤


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